Friday, April 05, 2013

More Women Shack Up & Give Birth; Marriage Rare

A federal government report with dire statistics of a culture producing children out of wedlock, purports that cohabitation is advantageous over marriage. The report surveyed girls/women aged 15 to 44, and showed that the vast majority of those less-educated tend to cohabit with men, not necessarily the father of their children.

Only 19 percent of women who got pregnant said it led to their nuptials. In 1995, that number was 32 percent.

A new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed that 48 percent of women were living with their significant other but not married to them. The number is a sharp increase from the 43 percent reported in 2002 and the 35 percent that reported the same situation in 1995.

Only 23 percent of the women said they got married first before moving in. That number dropped from 30 percent in 2002 and 39 percent in 1995. Women who opted to live without a boyfriend or husband stayed between 27 to 29 percent, which was consistent with the 1995 figures.

Seventy-four percent of 30-year-olds said they had cohabited with a partner. Fifty-five percent said they did it by the age of 25.

High school dropouts were most likely to move in with their boyfriend, with rates at 70 percent.

The older women got, the more likely they were to have tried it. A majority (55%) of women said they had lived with a boyfriend by age 25; by the time those women turned 30, a full 74% had cohabited.

Among women who moved in with a significant other before they turned 20, 25% became pregnant before they got married. But among women over 30, 8% got pregnant before marriage, the study found. The pregnancy rate for women who didn’t finish high school was 33%, compared with 5% of women who finished college.

Overall, getting pregnant was less likely to lead to marriage than in years past. Between 2006 and 2010, 19% of pregnancies prompted couples to get married. In 1995, 32% of pregnancies led to marriages, the researchers reported.

. . . The women in the most recent survey averaged 22 months for their first stint at living together . . .

. . . the study also suggests relationships that result from co-habitation could be more likely to last. It has previously been noted that couples who cohabitate are less likely to get married or stay married.

Other reports have suggested that young couples in particular do not always consider the consequences when deciding to cohabitate.

. . . nearly half of all American children have lived in a home where the adults are merely living together rather than married.

Today’s advocates of “modern family structure” will tell you that this is no big deal, that having a wedding ring is overrated. The kids, they say, will do fine either way. Well, the fact is, an intact marriage puts children way ahead of children in other types of households. National Review editor Rich Lowry, who labels the current trend a “cohabitation revolution,” notes, “Children in cohabiting households tend to lag children in intact married families on key social indicators and are not much better off than children in single-parent families.”

Jennifer Roback Morse of the National Organization for Marriage reports that children living with their mother and a live-in boyfriend are 33 times more likely to be abused than those living with their biological married parents. Also, children in households with unrelated adults are 50 times more likely to die from inflicted injuries, compared with children living with both biological parents.

Lowry says, “Children turn out to benefit from the structure, rituals, and identity that come with a lasting marriage between their parents. And the very act of committing to the norms of marriage makes adults better marital partners and parents.”